Rock N' Roll Fantasy

(Chicago, IL) Twenty years ago, I bought a bass guitar and started jamming with some cool dudes. We were all actors.  We called ourselves Orson's Well.  This story begins as ridiculous as it ends... because... that's the way I like to tell it. 

Preface, or What Happened To John.

Having met while working as stage extras for the Lyric Opera in Chicago, a group of guys decided to get together and jam. I believe the original idea was to put together a makeshift band to help this guy John impress his girlfriend.  I could be wrong, it doesn't matter, John disappears quickly in this story.  However, I can tell you that I had my own personal adventures with John and those are a whole other crazy story.  

One afternoon they guys show up to John's lakeside Roger's Park condo for rehearsal only to find John with a sledgehammer and dust covering everything.  Amps ruined, guitar strings breaking, it was a mess. John had decided randomly that morning to take out a wall that he no longer liked. The guys decided to move on. No more jamming with John.  Shortly after, John goes AWOL.  That's where I come in.  

Rock N' Roll Fantasy

Here's a great idea.  We can get a free beer if we play this open mic.  We only need a couple songs. That was the gist of the discussion when I was asked to play bass with the group.  So the answer in my mind was clear, go buy a cheap bass as an investment in free beer and having some fun with my friends.  I bought the cheapest Squier I could find.  I had no idea that it wouldn't be long before I was playing that Squier on famous stages across the Midwest. 

So that's how it started. A group of actor friends who figured out they could get free drinks by playing open mics.  Sounds pretty reasonable actually.  What makes it ridiculous is what happens next.  These are the highlights.  

It turns out that we become pretty popular at the open mic. It wasn't long before we were asked to host it.  More free beer and a little bit of money to pay for a rehearsal space... yeah.  But that also meant we needed a band name.  Yes, it's true, up until this point we hadn't even thought about having a band name.  So after a couple days and a series of long lists, we decided on the obvious choice: Orson's Well. 

I remember 911, the attack on the Twin Towers.  I remember how silent the city was.  You didn't realize how much you had gotten used to the constant sound of heavy air traffic until the only things in the sky were the fighter jets doing their regular flight patterns around the city.  Even the birds were quiet.  Orson's Well was asked to play at a benefit for the Red Cross.  Our first real gig.  That changed everything.

At this point, without really trying to book we were starting to play regularly. Bands asked us to come open for them.  I don't know if it was how awesome we were or if people just had a lot of fun hanging out with us, but it was only within a few months that we hit our next milestone. 

One of my favorite Shows we played was at the Blue Note.  The bands were all awesome that night. Jagermeister reps from California happened to be there.  They loved our show and offered us a sponsorship.  And that's where things really took off. 

Within eight months we had gone from open mics to touring the Midwest.  One show led to another.  Our faces on on posters were plastered all over the city.  Everywhere we went in Chicago people new us.  We not only played the Double Door (a famous Chicago Club) multiple times, we sold it out! But with sudden success, new stressors added weight and cracks began to form. 

From city to city, show to show, in a beat up old Chevy Astro van, with lot's of crazy antics and eyeliner (we all read Motley Crue's book The Dirt) we were living a Rock N' Roll Fantasy.  Lighting guitars on fire (you could do that back then even though you weren't supposed to, my friend used to do it to his drum kit), high energy performances, and trashing the stage at the end of our set during a song called "I don't know, I don't care" our shows were nuts. Backstage was just as crazy.  It was a great time. I could go on and on. But, this is just a brief history. 

Creative visions started to differ.  We all wanted the best for the band.  We just had different ideas of what the best direction was.  To be fair, we were still a fairly new band.  This was supposed to be all fun.  I'm not sure we ever considered success until we were successful.  We released our first album.  Orson's Well: Serve The Verve. And as the often told band story goes, we broke up after its release. 

I remember the day it all ended.  Now I'm skipping past some things here because you wouldn't be brothers if you didn't have fights once in a while.  That's part of being in a band.  It's like a family you choose.  I don't need to tell those stories now.  The tension at rehearsal was high.  We were rehearsing for a tour in support of our new album.  It was getting to be too much for a couple band members.  What was the final straw? Well... there was an argument about how the "DA DA DAs" in our punk version of "Sweet Caroline" were to be performed.  I know, crazy right!

Orson's Well.  It started as a way for a group of actors living in Chicago to get free beer and hang out and ended over the group vocal of "Sweet Caroline's" "DA DA DAs."  In between we rose to great heights in a short period of time.  We won a battle of the bands before we ever walked on stage. We partied backstage of a Jager show with Disturbed at the House of Blues. We were invited to the premier of a movie that featured some of our songs. We survived bar fights that looked like they were out of an old Western movie (minus the guns). We didn't die during a drive by shooting in a back alley in a shady part of Rogers Park. We freaked out locals at Bob Evans for breakfast on the road. We got chased out of dorms at Notre Dame by Priests. There are a ton of stories.  Some I'll never tell.  I learned a lot.  It was a great period in my life and a story that ended as ridiculous as it started... "your DA DA DA's are flat." "They are not flat, DA DA DA." "Does it matter?.... the crowd yells it with us every time anyway." "You guys, I can't do this anymore."

Epilogue

2020: Because of the pandemic, the members of Orson's Well use zoom to meet up and see each other for the fist time in 16 years.  Scott lives in LA, Dom lives in Chicago, Bill lives over by Banghor, ME, Jay in Grand Rapids, MI.

2021: Orson's Well releases, for the first time digitally, their album "Serve The Verve" which they never got a chance to promote.  They've also been recording in their home studios and have released a new recording of the title track along with new material.